Theorized Work for Adapting the Principles of Animation to Virtual

Reality as a New Form of Narrative for 3D Animation

André Salomão, Milton Luiz Horn Vieira

, Nicolas C. Romeiro and Victor Nassar

DesignLab, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, R. Roberto Sampaio Gonzaga, 274, Florianópolis, Brazil

Keywords: Virtual Reality, 3D Animation, Principles of Animation.

Abstract: In this paper, we will for starters, introduce the basics concepts of virtual reality, how it works, which its

upsides and downsides are, followed by the contextualization of the twelve principles of animation then we

open a discussion about how we can adapt it for the media of virtual reality. The goal of this research is to

create a discussion about the utilization of virtual reality as a new form of narrative for third-dimensional

animation and how we can improve the adaptation of standard animation concepts to a new form of media.

1 INTRODUCTION

Due to the success of productions, producers might

look for new ways to increase the reach of their

products, like redesigning it to another type of media

beyond the traditional ones like cinema or television.

This is the transmedia process that happens when the

source of the content is explored in another type of

media, like going from comics to movies or games

(Jenkins, 2007).

Nowadays there are multiple examples of

transmedia, we see it in products like Harry Potter,

with books being transformed into movies, Lord of

the Rings having its source material, the books, being

turned into oscar-winning movies. But a book to the

screens isn’t the only form of transmedia, Harry

Potter has also been delivered to the world of games,

the same we can speak about Lord of the Rings, and

in the case of games, the user stops passively

interacting with the source material and starts being a

piece of the interactive narrative.

One of the recent technological advancements is

the fact we are utilizing virtual reality hardware as a

new type of media. This technology creates a mental

immersion on the user, putting them inside a

simulation, or a virtual world (Sherman; Craig, 2003).

Not only games and traditional media content are

being adapted to virtual reality, but also applications

for training in medicine (Machado et al., 2011; Soares

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6646-2799

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9986-9405

et al., 2014; Vaughan et al., 2016), engineering

laboratory (McCusker et al., 2018), education (Zhang

et al., 2018), readiness against earthquakes (Lovreglio

et al, 2018).

Since its beginnings, animation has evolved

alongside the technology, being presented in old

technologies like the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope,

and zoetrope, until arriving at the current media of

cinema and television (Sutton, Williams, 2009).

Google tried to explore animation in virtual reality

with the project called Spotlight, which is a project of

3D animated stories in virtual reality using 360

degrees, with projects like Age of Sail, based on

history by William Avery. They also developed Back

to the Moon, in celebration of George Melies and his

movie A Trip to the Moon.

Considering that virtual reality is being used in

other areas of research, and animation has historically

been tested in new types of media the idea of the

research is to create a procedure to adapt traditional

3D animation to virtual reality to create new forms of

narrative for animation. To do this, we need first to

discuss empirically how we can start to adapt 3D

animation concepts to the media of virtual reality so

we can understand the core problem of this

proposition to create new forms, techniques, and

procedures for the narrative in the animation.

In this paper, we will for starters, introduce the

basics concepts of virtual reality, how it works, which

its upsides and downsides are, followed by the twelve

308

Salomão, A., Vieira, M., Romeiro, N. and Nassar, V.

Theorized Work for Adapting the Principles of Animation to Virtual Reality as a New Form of Narrative for 3D Animation.

DOI: 10.5220/0010338303080312

In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 1: GRAPP, pages

308-312

ISBN: 978-989-758-488-6

principles of animation discussed by Ollie Johnston

and Frank Thomas in the book Disney Animation:

The Illusion of Life (1981). Then we will open a

discussion about how we view the principles of

animation that can or cannot be adapted to the

uniqueness of virtual reality and the ideas we have for

the next step of this research.

2 FUNDAMENTALS

First, we will approach the necessary fundamentals

knowledge necessary to discuss virtual reality and

animation principles.

2.1 Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is a technology that is growing in

popularity, being used in entertainment, but also

research education, and training (Zhang, M; Zhang,

Z; Chang, Y. 2018).

Even though the concept of virtual reality can be

backtracked to 1960 with Ivan Sutherland (Cipresso

et al. 2018), for the sake of the proposed discussion in

this article, we will be using the definition and system

proposed by LaValle (2017) for virtual reality that

uses the following concept.

• Artificial sensory stimulation is used to induce

targeted behavior in an organism, while the

interference remains either imperceptible or

hardly perceptible.

LaValle also creates an image concept of how the

virtual reality’s system is supposed to work, having

the connection between three components, the

organism, the physical world, and the hardware, and

how they connect and/or interact with each other, the

image concept proposed by LaValle can be seen in

Figure 1.

Figure 1: Schematics of LaValle’s concept (2017).

Virtual Reality has its limitations considering

design choices, in the virtual world, it is suggested

that the scales should be as faithful as possible to the

real world, to let the user be more familiar with the

depth and perspective and navigate it more naturally

without discomfort. It is advised to avoid designing

environments where much user movement is needed.

Concerns about the visual render are first that the only

difference between the left and right visions must be

the user’s point of view and nothing else. All the UI

must be incorporated in the virtual world and not be

something fixed. The rendering system must be

optimized to assure a constant frame rate. Avoiding

the illusion of undesired movement, and do not make

the camera move when the user is not moving. When

camera movement is needed to make the impression

that the user is moving, as a rollercoaster simulation,

as an example, it must be done carefully so it does not

give the user side effects (Salomão, 2020). Nolan et

al. (2017) say that every camera movement is

perceived as a user sight moving, implying that any

movement not controlled by the user may cause

discomfort.

It is of importance to understand and comprehend

the negative effects of virtual on users and why it can

happen for the safety of the user (Jerald, 2015),

otherwise as researchers and workers in this field, we

will not be able to create a hypothesis, ideas, and

design solutions for 3D animation in virtual reality

that can be feasible for the end-user.

For this article, we will consider, for the sake of

discussion, the organism to be the user, the Head-

Mounted Display (HMD) as the hardware for virtual

reality, and the physical world, a workplace where the

user will be interacting with the virtual world.

2.2 Animation Principles

As stated beforehand, for this study we will consider

the twelve principles of animation by Johnston &

Thomas (1981), two senior animators of Disney

Studios written in the book Disney Animation: The

Illusion of Life, as a starting point for the discussion

of adapting 3D animation to the media of virtual

reality.

The first principle Squash & Stretch means to

squash and stretch the objects during their animation

to give the sensation of the flexibility of it. In

animation classic cartoon animation by Disney, this

effect was exaggerated to cause a comic effect, while

in realistic styled animation, the volume of the object

must be balanced between both concepts.

Then we have the principle of Anticipation

intending to make actions more realistic and avoid the

abrupt initiation of movement. For example, the act

of inspiring air before blowing it on a candle is

necessary this movement of inspiring the air so the

audience is prepared for what is about to happen and

doesn’t miss the joke or the meaning of the scene.

Theorized Work for Adapting the Principles of Animation to Virtual Reality as a New Form of Narrative for 3D Animation

309

Following anticipation, we have the principle of

Staging, where the idea is that every scene in the

animation has a purpose, and the composition of this

scene has to meet the needs of this purpose, working

to direct the audience attention and not leave the open

interpretation of what is happening, unless that is the

point of the scene.

The fourth principle is the combination of Straight

Ahead Action with Pose to Pose, the first being an

animation technique where the frames are drawing in

sequence as the action is being developed while the

second consist of first drawing the necessary

keyframes of the animation and then the in-betweens

of it

The fifth principle is also a combination of Follow

Trough with Overlapping Action, which defines the

form in which the object’s body does not stop moving

immediately once the action is concluded, and that

they are attracted to the gravity’s center of the

character, creating progressively a more natural and

fluid animation.

Slow In and Out as a principle works with the

acceleration and slowdown of objects, the goal is to

avoid the movement to seem robotic and unrealistic

by adding a slow in effect at the start of the movement

and a slow out effect when stopping the movement.

The seventh principle of animation is Arc, the idea

is that natural movements from an organism can be

usually represented by an arc, like the walking cycle

of a human character. The principle consists in to

avoid using linear movements since those usually

cause an effect of the character being rigid, instead of

by using an arc movement, it has a more fluid and

natural movement.

Secondary Action as the eighth principle works as

an adjunct to the main action of the character, which

means that it cannot be more important and take the

attention of the viewer out of the main action. For

example, in a scene where two characters are talking,

the gentle gesture of the hands of one on a table

cannot overtake the main action otherwise the viewer

will not pay attention to what is being said.

To dictate the rhythm of the animation we also

have Timing as a principle, referring to the number of

frames used in determining action, dictating the pace

of said action, and making it more physically realistic,

such as in an animation of a character running, where

fewer frames will be used to present the idea of speed.

The tenth principle, Exaggeration, to make the

actions more entertaining, exaggeration is applied to

expressions, actions, and overall elements of the

scene, making the eyes bigger to express surprise, or

making the character melt to demonstrate heat are

examples of how this principle is applied to

animations.

Animation at the start, being mostly 2D, also used

a lot of concepts and ideas from drawing, that is what

the eleventh principle of animation is about, Solid

Drawing, the idea of making the drawing not appear

as flat, giving it volume, using light, shadow,

perspective and avoiding showing asymmetric

character.

Lastly, we have Appeal which presents the idea

that a character must be designed to be charismatic,

with the objective of the spectator liking and bonding

with it, drawing the character with baby-like facial

features tends to make them more appealing to the

audience than one with complex facial features.

3 DISCUSSION

John Bucher (2018) after interviewing Jessica

Brillhart, a filmmaker for project Spotlight, took as

concepts for animation in virtual reality that engaging

with the user feels more like a dance than a forced

experience, characters can work as vessels for the

story, traditional narratives structures like three-act

might be used, but not entirely as it is, among other

discovery.

The twelve principles of animation by Johnston &

Thomas were developed during years of work in the

Walt Disney animation studios, it was also done using

the traditional type of media, a two-dimensional

plane, to explore the narratives of an animation.

Virtual reality brings a new dimension, the

possibility to work with a tri-dimensional plane, or to

explore the two-dimensional plane with a 360 degrees

video, which enables the possibilities of new concepts

being developed.

These new concepts for 3D animation can be done

by creating a virtual world, like an ordinary game in

virtual reality, that runs in real-time, or more in line

with a traditional animation that runs as a pre-

rendered work that is being displayed to the user.

So, considering the possibilities of virtual reality,

the first principle of Squash and Stretch can be

explored in the immersion sense. What this means is

that, even though the concept itself does not change,

we can give it more depth and scale, which means, for

example, things that stretch can go beyond the two-

dimensional plane by wrapping the user in the

movement of the object, and since he is also

immersed in a virtual world. The same idea can be

applied to the principle of Secondary Action and

Anticipation, we can go beyond the boundaries of a

two-dimensional plane and enhance the impact of the

GRAPP 2021 - 16th International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

310

principle, improving the experience and the way the

narrative is told.

The staging principle works a lot of the time with

camera cuts, with the idea to bring the attention of the

user to a narrative event. But how to properly do that

in virtual reality? In both proposed scenarios, the user

can just spin his head around and completely miss an

important moment of the story. One proposition we

have is the use of environmental elements to redirect

the user’s attention to the point of narrative focus.

This is done already in open-world games especially

where in an open-space the game has to guide the

player in a certain direction so he can progress with

the game, the same can be applied to animation in

virtual reality.

If we think of the development of animation in

virtual reality as the development of a game, we will

see that both use the same form of animation, Straight

Ahead Action and Pose to Pose, as necessary. Virtual

reality does not seem to influence this animation

principle at first glance, since it is the result that

affects the user and his experience. But in case the

animation runs in real-time in the virtual reality

experience, we suggest looking into studies about the

performance of the animation effects if done by

interpolation or frame by frame on real-time

rendering to see if it has a meaningful impact to the

point where one technique might be more reliable

than the other for a better chance of having locked

frames per second to not cause health issues to the

user.

The same performance issues can be the case for

the principle of Follow Through & Overlapping

Action and Arc. With current hardware limitations in

virtual reality, these principles can be removed

entirely to increase the performance of the animation,

considering this principle can be notoriously seen in

hair movements, and those require an extra amount of

power to animate properly even in non-virtual reality

environments. The necessary Arc movements of

characters for example might be less fluid due to the

nature of having models with lower polygons count.

Regarding Slow In and Out, alongside the

principle of Timing, here we must take extra care

especially in certain situations, it might make or break

the experience for the user. Traditionally, both

principles oversee different aspects of the timing of

the animation, and timing in virtual reality is crucial

for certain situations like for example, let’s theorize a

scene where the player is following the main

character in a car, because of the immersion effect

virtual reality has, animating the speed up and the

slow down of the car is not something we can just

ignore and remove from it like the previous principle.

If in this scene, the car suddenly stops out of nowhere

instead of slow down, the abrupt stop of it could jar

the user and cause side effects on his health. The same

can be said for the opposite, if for example, the

environment of the animation speeds up for whatever

reason, it might also cause a disorientation effect.

In animations, it is often that characters,

environments, and the animation itself are

exaggerated, but as we theorized with Squash &

Stretch and Secondary Action, it is bound by the

media it is in, there is so much exaggeration we can

fit into a two-dimensional plane screen. In virtual

reality, the possibilities of exaggeration are limited by

its virtual world and how much you can do it without

having a performance impact, finding the balance of

performance and narrative impact is key to use this

principle properly in animation for virtual reality.

The Solid Drawing principle of animation is

related to the concepts of drawing and how important

it is to follow it to create a proper drawing for

animation. Even when working on 3D animation, the

result is demonstrated in a two-dimensional plane,

just like hand drawing. For virtual reality, it is

important to keep the virtual world in scale with the

real world, a different scale can cause health issues,

that is where the importance of Solid Drawing shows

in virtual reality, keeping the object on a scale and in

check of what the user expects to be real to avoid

health issues.

Lastly, Appeal can be seen as the culmination of

all principles being properly applied to the animation,

true assessment of the Appeal principle on animation

in virtual reality can only be checked or studied

properly once every principle has been tested to

exhaustion. It is entirely possible that by studying

every principle, we might even see new concepts or

ideas for what is considered appealing for the virtual

reality’s user.

4 CONCLUSIONS

It was presented in this paper the idea of needing to

first discuss empirically the adaption of the principles

of animation as the first step to create a new procedure

for the development of new or adaptation of 3D

animation in virtual reality.

The conclusion is that the adaptation of the

principles of animation for the media of virtual reality

will require a better understanding of the limits

imposed by the selected hardware.

We see examples like Squash & Stretch,

Anticipation, and Secondary Action where virtual

reality might help create new creative ways of

Theorized Work for Adapting the Principles of Animation to Virtual Reality as a New Form of Narrative for 3D Animation

311

applying those concepts due to the fact of the

animation not being bound to a two-dimensional

plane and instead of being on a tri-dimensional plane.

We also see principles that instead be restricted in

virtual reality, like Follow Through & Overlapping

Action and Arc, due to the limitation of the hardware.

Both animations require more polygons to have a

fluent animation, and in virtual reality, there is a

tendency of reducing them for performance's sake.

The reality is that even though we can theorize

good and bad applications of the principles in virtual

reality, it is necessary to do more applicated research

on this topic to narrow down the issues in each case,

and consequently, find solutions to problems and

creative innovations to create a better experience to

watch 3D animation for the viewer.

Just as 2D animation principles had a transition

period to 3D, one is also necessary for virtual reality

to create a feasible product for the end-user, be it

animation for entertainment purposes or as of help for

society.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

The financial support of CAPES and FAPESC. And

the team in DesignLAB/UFSC and Tecmidia for the

collaboration to this research.

REFERENCES

Bucher, J. Storytelling for Virtual Reality: Methods and

Principles for Crafting Immersive Narratives. 2018.

Routledge, New York.

Cipresso, P.; Giglioli, I. A. C.; Raya, M. A.; Riva, G. The

Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented

Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of

the Literature. Frontiers in Psychology, v. 9, n.

November, p. 1–20, 2018.

Jenkins, H. Transmedia storytelling 101. [2007]. Available

at:

<http://henryjenkis.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytellin

g_101.html> Accessed 01 set. 2019.

Jerald, Jason. The VR book: Human-centered design for

virtual reality. First Edit ed. Association for Computing

Machinery and Morgan & Claypool Publishers. 2015.

Johnston, O.; Thomas, F. The Illusion of Life Disney

Animation. Walt Disney Production. 1981.

LaValle, S. M., 2017 Virtual Reality. Cambridge University

Press.

Lovreglio, R.; Gonzalez, V.; Feng, Z.; et al. Prototyping

Virtual Reality Serious Games for Building Earthquake

Preparedness: The Auckland City Hospital Case Study.

Available at: < https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.09119v1>.

2018.

Machado, L. Dos S.; De Moraes, R. M.; Dos Santos Nunes,

F. DE L.; Moreira Da Costa, R. M. Serious Games

Baseados em Realidade Virtual para Educação Médica.

Rev. bras. educ. med., Rio de Janeiro , v. 35, n. 2, p.

254-262, 2011.

McCusker, J.; Almaghrabi, M. A.; Kucharski, B. Is a

Virtual RealityBased Laboratory Experience a Viable

Alternative to the Real Thing? ASEE Annual

Conference & Exposition, 2018.

Nolan, Jason et al. Emergin Trends in Virtual Reality for

Gaming: an assessment of best practices from research

and development in the gaming industry. 2017.

Salomão, André. Treinamento baseado em Design de

Jogos. 2020. 200 f. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Curso de

Design, Programa de Pós Graduação em Design,

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis,

2020.

Sherman, W. R.; Craig, A. B. Understanding Virtual

Reality: Interface, Application, and Design. Elsevier

Science (USA), 2003.

Soares, A. V.; Woellner, S. S.; Andrade, C. Dos S.; et al.

The use of Virtual Reality for upper limb rehabilitation

of hemiparetic Stroke patients. Fisioterapia em

Movimento, v. 27, n. 3, p. 309–317, 2014.

Sutton. I; Williams. R. The Animator's Survival Kit A

manual of methods, principles and formulas for

classical, computer, games, stop motion and internet

animators Expanded Edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

New York, 2009.

Vaughan, N.; Dubey, V. N.; Wainwright, T. W.; Middelton,

R. G. A review of virtual reality based training

simulators for orthopaedic surgery. Medical

Engineering and Physics, 2016.

Zhang, M.; Zhang, Z.; Chang, Y.; et al. Recent

developments in game-based virtual reality educational

laboratories using the microsoft kinect. International

Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, v. 13,

n. 1, p. 138–159, 2018.

GRAPP 2021 - 16th International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

312